ONCE they were a byword for mindless docility. But cows have a secret
mental life in which they bear grudges, nurture friendships and become
excited over intellectual challenges, scientists have found.

Cows are also capable of feeling strong emotions such as pain, fear and
even anxiety they worry about the future. But if farmers provide the right
conditions, they can also feel great happiness.

The findings have emerged from studies of farm animals that have
found similar traits in pigs, goats, chickens and other livestock. They
suggest that such animals may be so emotionally similar to humans that
welfare laws need to be rethought.

Christine Nicol, professor of animal welfare at Bristol University, said
even chickens may have to be treated as individuals with needs and problems.

Remarkable cognitive abilities and cultural innovations have been
revealed, she said.

Our challenge is to teach others that every animal we intend to eat or
use is a complex individual, and to adjust our farming culture accordingly.

Nicol will be presenting her findings to a scientific conference to be

held in London next month by Compassion in World Farming, the animal
welfare lobby group.

John Webster, professor of animal husbandry at Bristol, has just
published a book on the topic, Animal Welfare: Limping Towards Eden.

People have assumed that intelligence is linked to the ability to suffer
and that because animals have smaller brains they suffer less than humans.

That is a pathetic piece of logic, he said.

Webster and his colleagues have documented how cows within a herd form
smaller friendship groups of between two and four animals with whom they
spend most of their time, often grooming and licking each other.

They will also dislike other cows and can bear grudges for months or
years.

Dairy cow herds can also be intensely sexual. Webster describes how the
cows become excited when one of the herd comes into heat and start trying to
mount her.

Cows look calm, but really they are gay nymphomaniacs, he said.

Donald Broom, professor of animal welfare at Cambridge University, who is
presenting other research at the conference, will describe how cows can also
become excited by solving intellectual challenges.

In one study, researchers challenged the animals with a task where they
had to find how to open a door to get some food. An electroencephalograph
was used to measure their brainwaves.

Their brainwaves showed their excitement; their heartbeat went up and
some even jumped into the air. We called it their Eureka moment, said Broom.

The assumption that farm animals cannot suffer from conditions that would
be considered intolerable for humans is partly based on the idea that they
are less intelligent than people and have no sense of self .

Increasingly, however, research reveals this to be untrue. Keith
Kendrick, professor of neurobiology at the Babraham Institute in Cambridge,
has found that even sheep are far more complex than realised and can
remember 50 ovine faces even in profile. They can recognise another sheep
after a year apart.

Kendrick has also described how sheep can form strong affections for
particular humans, becoming depressed by long separations and greeting them
enthusiastically even after three years.

The Compassion in World Farming conference will be opened with a keynote
speech by Jane Goodall, the primatologist who founded the study of animal
sentience with her research into chimpanzees in the early 1960s.

Goodall overturned the then accepted belief that animals were simply
automatons showing little individuality or emotions. It has taken many
years, however, for scientists to accept that such ideas could be applied to
a wide range of other animals.

Sentient animals have the capacity to experience pleasure and are
motivated to seek it, said Webster.

You only have to watch how cows and lambs both seek and enjoy pleasure
when they lie with their heads raised to the sun on a perfect English
summers day. Just like humans.

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